


Violent Nights

by apostate (394percentdone)



Series: Freedom On My Tongue [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmare, oof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/394percentdone/pseuds/apostate
Summary: Noure has a nightmare





	Violent Nights

Sleep is violent. It’s dangerous and brutal and one wrong step is all it takes. Noure hates it, they can’t remember the last time they wanted to sleep, knows it must have been before the dreams and demons and the fear. Nightmares. Ice crawling through their bones, freezing their blood as it flows through their veins, building a frigid knot in their chest. 

Despair tonight, long spindling fingers of dread and decay reaching for the cooling heart in their center. Noure knows this one intimately. Is familiar with the haunted howl echoing from under the thing’s hood, the whispers it croons in Noure’s ear are lies and Noure knows not to listen. But they never were good at following directions. 

But they are good in a fight. 

Heat in the form of fire. Conjured flames in the palms of their hands, bright orange and gold and Noure lets them grow until their hands are consumed. Directs them at the demon made of ice and allows the flames to fly and to burn. Howl turning into a screech, despair flees from Noure’s dream and leaves only the stench of scorched rot. 

Now there are only the demons of their own making. Noure closes their eyes in the Fade to open them in their home. Familiar rickety bed, worn sheets, and a pillow passed down from their mother. Not enough light filtering in from the window to justify waking up. So they don’t. 

Instead, they turn over and bunch the sheets around their face. Warm and content and just on the edge of drowsiness. Momentary paradise to rival the Golden City. Even though there is a lingering chill coming from somewhere, a hole in their sheets or a draft from the window probably. Noure doesn’t pay it any mind.

They do pay attention when they heard the clang of plate clad boots against their door though. The sheer terror freezing them in place makes damn well sure they’re paying attention. A mad desire to fight filling their lungs with burning air. Another kick and the door comes down and Noure is on their feet. Snarl on their lips. 

But they’re only good in a fair fight. 

And this is five on one. Smite sundering the air with an acrid smell, magic on the tips of Noure’s fingers fizzing and popping and disappearing. Pain flaring in each and every nerve and Noure is screaming. Falling. Cold metal in their swimming vision, a sword surrounded by flame. 

“Yield!“ 

But they never were good at following directions.

Noure hits the ground with a thud, lashes out with at the nearest templar with a kick directed at the joint in their armor just under the knee. Earns a grunt and a boot in the face. A snap, copper and rust in the back of their mouth, something wet and burning hot and Noure sees stars bloom across their vision.

_This can’t be happening_. Frozen terror clawing in their chest, sizzling anger burning in their lungs. Noure tries again, blindly flailing and connecting with something sharp just out of sight. But this time the yelp of surprise is familiar and the name ringing in the air shouldn’t be so worried coming from a templar. 

"Noure? Noure what’s wrong?” Hands on their shoulders, a blurry outline of a face in front of theirs and Noure uses their head this time, slams their forehead upwards and into their attacker. Who swears and their hands drop away from Noure. 

Only to return with a gentle shake, “Wake up Noure, before you hurt yourself!" 

Wake up?  _Wake up?_  Noure drives their knee into the other’s chest. Winding them and Noure scrabbles away with a jerk of their arms and without warning the indistinct form of the templar vanishes. Like smoke. 

Cold currents carrying the stench of rot, of stale air, of despair. Noure blinks the tears and the stars from their eyes and finds they’re not home at all. Air leaving their lungs in a choked gasp as the dead hand of despair clutches around their neck. 

This time Noure lets the fire consume them both. Golden flames licking the air, a hollow scream as the demon burns, scraps of thin ratted cloth swirling around them in the inferno. Noure blazes. A pyre for the dying and despairing. And they don’t put themselves out until nothing is left of the demon but a cold bruise around Noure’s throat. 

Noure closes their eyes in the Fade and opens them in their home. Jackknifes up under the sheets, lungs burning and aching and Noure lets the fear and the anger in their chest, in their veins, condense in the back of their throat and they  _scream_.

"Whoa, whoa Noure are y-” That same voice, but now Noure can put a name to it, knows the warmth and the intimacy and the safety of it. 

“ _Anders_.” Noure’s voice is ragged, torn. Broken around the edges. They look around, eyes wide and clear, but they don’t see him anywhere. “Anders… Where are you?" 

A cleared throat, from off to Noure’s left and. Further down than they were expecting. "You pushed me out of bed in your sleep.” Noure turns over, peers over the edge of their bed, finds Anders on the floor in a long-limbed sprawl. 

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t- I thought you were- Are you hurt?” Cursing themselves, for their foolishness and anger. 

But Anders looks up at them with a shrug and a worried look in his eyes, “I’m alright, you’re the one I’m worried about.” He stands with creak and pop in his joints, sighs in time with them, only to crawl back into bed beside Noure. “Are you alright?”

His hands are so much longer than Noure’s own. They should be a threat, a danger in their breadth, but Noure only finds comfort in how they engulf Noure’s as Anders tangles their fingers together. Finds the warmth of them against Noure’s frozen palms banishes the last of the ice in their chest. 

“Yea, yea I’m fine.” Still ragged, still torn. But mending. “I just want to go to sleep without…” They don’t need to finish the thought, so they let it hang in the silence it creates. Exhaustion pulls at them, drains them. It’s in the hollowness of their chest, the buzzing in their head, hidden in the marrow of their bones. 

Matched in the bags under Ander’s eyes. “Yeah, me too." 

They linger in the dark, hand clasped around hand. Eventually, they move, there are things to needing to be done and a healers job is never finished. But before the day has to start there is silence and familiar breaths, there is the rhythm of heartbeats too frightened to fall asleep but too drained to do anything but dread the fall of heavy eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> as always you can find all of my works -generally before they're posted to the archive- on my tumblr [apostatetabris] as well!


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